After a decade of asking all the questions, Master T is getting a taste of what it's like to answer them.

All day.

"I guess it really hit me when I actually started doing promotional tours," the former MuchMusic personality said yesterday.

Master T recently issued Reggae Vibes Session One, his first in a series of compilation CDs for Virgin Music Canada.

"I learned what it's like to fly into Calgary at night and be told you had a day of press starting at 9 a.m."

He added, laughing: "I used to look at artists I'd interview and be like, 'Why are you so miserable at five in the afternoon?' Well, because they've been talking their heads off and trying to make this story sound different every time!"

Not that Master T -- aka Tony Young -- is complaining in the slightest.

A MuchMusic day-oner who assumed his on-air role as VJ in 1990, he left the station last September after a rumoured clash with management. Both sides kept quiet about the falling out at the time: T actually signed off on a decidedly triumphant note with his "Goodbye Blocko" for which he personally enlisted Lauryn Hill to perform.

He now admits he felt he was being "put out to pasture" by the fast-changing Much, and plans to detail his side of the story in a coming biography co-written by Dalton Higgins, due this fall from ECW Press.

"People ask me why I left Much," he said. "They've got their side of the story and I've got mine, and maybe the two will never meet. But one thing I wanted to do was progress. When I realized my time was up, I offered to come off the air and take care of MuchVibe and the urban content on MuchMusic. I'd create a department, because this music warrants it. There was no room for that in their eyes.

"But Moses (Znaimer) told me early on that there was a lot more for me out there. At the time I couldn't see it. It wasn't until I got out there that I realized there was."

After leaving MuchMusic, T promptly secured the Virgin deal and started up his own production company.

It was a matter of carrying over his TV image as the country's most recognizable urban-music impresario.

Still, he said, "I used to deal with a finished product sitting in front of me. Now it's a bigger journey that includes compiling a record and promoting it."

Reggae Vibes Session One was mixed by T's longtime collaborator, DJ Dave Campbell, and fuses pop, reggae, Jamaican dancehall and hip-hop-tinged Canadian reggae into a continuous party record. The range is deceptively wide, moving from Shaggy, to the new Beenie Man single, to locals Kardinal Offishall and K-OS. Nelly Furtado is tossed in, in reggae-remix form. Newcomer Sugar Prince has gained attention with a tune co-written by T's wife, Paula Johnson.

"It isn't just a straight-up dancehall record. I'm trying to expose different types of reggae music," T said. "I could have licensed underground dancehall tracks in a minute, but people have known me on a commercial end for years. I want to tap that kid who might only know Shaggy but who might think Beenie Man is cool, or that K-OS sounds different.

"A good record is a good record."

Next up in T's six-album Virgin deal is his Urban Vibes Vol. 1 comp, due in the fall.

Tonight he is host of the Canadian Urban Music Association's Urban X-Posure Awards at the Phoenix, and he MCs Carnival's Irie Music Festival at Nathan Philips Square Saturday with Maxi Priest and Sugar Prince.